Featured Domains

11 domains affected by Donuts’ “trusted notifier” deal with MPAA

Donuts released statistics today about the first year of its “trusted notifier” arrangement with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The arrangement allows the MPAA to notify Donuts of domain names that have “clear evidence of pervasive copyright infringement” and Donuts may address the issue by suspending the domain name or working with the domain name registrar. The MPAA may only notify Donuts after it has tried to address the issue directly.

12 domain names were submitted over the year. Of these, seven were suspended or deleted by the registrar, three were suspended by Donuts and one was addressed by the hosting provider. Donuts consulted with the registrar and registrant of another domain name and decided to not take action.

Keep in mind that Donuts runs about 200 top level domain names and has about two million second level domain names on those TLDs. Donuts didn’t reveal which top level domains were affected, although Donuts operates the .movie top level domain.

Donuts noted:

There has been concern on the part of some in the industry about this type of arrangement—namely, that it represented a “slippery slope” toward inappropriate content control, or that hundreds of domain names would be snatched away from rightful registrants. To the contrary, however, and in line with the previously published characteristics of a trusted notifier program, a mere handful of names have been impacted, and only those that clearly were devoted to illegal activity. And to Donuts’ knowledge, in no case did the registrant contest the suspension or seek reinstatement of the domain.